Preston Filbert

"A Feast in Babylon" (2013)

Years ago I was thumbing through an encyclopedia and I came across an entry that asked "Was there a dinosaur in ancient Babylon?" I think a question like that deserves an answer, so I wrote "A Feast in Babylon."

Guess who's eating.

The story of the Sirrush is found in the Bible Apocrypha, where the name of the beast is usually translated as "the dragon" (and that's pretty cool too). But dinosaur or dragon aside, as I wrote I became more interested in the people around the beast. Who takes care of such a thing? Who loves it, and who hates it? And who cleans up after its meals?

"Wodin's Day" (2011)

Having spent a good part of my adult life in journalism, I never thought that writing mythology-inspired books would appeal to me. My favorite writer is William Faulkner, and I had spent years -- years -- trying to write something as hard and heavy as one of his works.

But a few years ago, I got to thinking that the gods, at least as portrayed in Richard Wagner's "Ring" stories, were petty jerks. Plus Wagner himself had a pretty smug attitude toward the dwarf Alberich, dismissing him out of hand because he was ugly and misshapened. And that's where my story for "Wodin's Day" started, with the question "Where'd that dwarf come from? And whatever happened to him?" (In Wagner he just disappears.)

Once I started writing, it was fun. Fun to not have to worry about historic detail, fun to not have to fret about being sued by Pepsi or someone for misappropriating a slogan or something, and fun to write about characters who could rip up trees with their bare hands -- not that I approve of such actions.

What I discovered -- or what I rediscovered since I used to enjoy Tolkien's books -- was the freedom of the fantastical and the wide open range of settings, events and characters it allows. I also remembered that in the history of Western literature (at least) the realism I had struggled so long with has made up only a tiny fraction of our creations: From "The Odyssey" to "Hamlet" to "A Christmas Carol", the fantastical has been woven through some of our greatest stories.

So I wrote my book twice -- once long and (I'm afraid) still weighted down by realistic detail, then again by throwing a lot of that stuff out and just digging down into the earth to see what's in there, like you do when you're a kid. Who knows? Could be treasure.